5.1 Surround Sound speaker system not working in Windows 7 Professional 64bit edition

Anonymous

My problem is pretty much the same as other users who can't get their surround sound speaker system to function properly in Windows 7.

I have a subwoofer and 5 speakers (2 for front, 2 for rear, 1 for center). Connection to the on-board RealTek HD Audio is simple, orange for the subwoofer, green for front and black for rear.

Testing the sound in the RealTek HD Audio Manager and Control Panel->Sound windows produces a sound on all channels at the same time, which is the desired setup.

However different applications use different channels. IE and Firefox uses the front channels, VLC/MediaPlayer uses the rear. 3D games (ie WoW) uses all channels. In each case the subwoofer doesn't work.

I have already tried downloading the latest drivers from the motherboard manufacturers website (Gigabyte). I even tried the RealTek provided drivers (even though on RealTek's website that is NOT recommended). I have tried connecting the subwoofer connectors to different jacks (reversed black and green).

I have experimented with the settings in the RealTek HD Audio Manager and Control Panel->Sound windows. Nothing works.

These exact same subwoofer and speakers worked perfectly fine in Windows XP.

I have 2 questions:

a) Has anyone resolved their 5.1 & Windows 7 problem doing something I haven't tried yet?

b) When is Microsoft going to take this problem seriously? All of the Microsoft provided answers just repeats what everyone else

has already tried.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

First unplug 3 cable (orange, green and black) then Go to control panel - Hardware and sound - Real tek HD audio manager - tick center, subwoofer and rear pair, front left and right and speaker fill

Then click Device advance settings.

select "make front and rear output devices playback two different audio streams simultaneously" and give ok

The plug all the three pin one by one and select proper option in the popup windows.

thats all.

You didn't give me enough information to get this working. My system runs Win 7 X64 Home Premium. When I select 5.1 sound as the capability the side speakers of my Logitech x550's are not recognized. If I select 7.1, which is the chipset capacity of my Realtek chip, I can get the two outside speakers enabled as "rear" speakers. and can push test tones to each of the four surrounding speakers and to the center/bass combination via the Realtek driver.

As far as the "make front and rear output devices playback two different audio streams simultaneously" is concerned... I can't find this option. There are at least two providers of "control interfaces" active on my system. One is provided by RealTek, the other by Microsoft. The paths to these interfaces is circuitous and confusing, to say the least.

IMHO some compromises are in order. I've got my Pandora One stream playing acceptably in my small study. Many of the source sounds streamed for me are recorded in stereo, or even mono, so I find myself hitting the "matrix" button on my Logitech X550 control fairly frequently. Occasionally a newer piece is delivered which actually sounds Ok without the "matrix" decoder.

What I would really like to be able to do is to "reconfigure on the fly" between the built in USB speaker bar on my Acer Z3731 "All in One" system and my external Logitech X550's with the capacity for 5.1 "surround sound" presentation via three wires. When I try your procedure, I don't get separate recognition of each wire as it is plugged in and often end up with 2.1 sound being pushed out to my 5.1 external speakers because somehow Microsoft has re-recognized the built in USB based sound bar instead of the three rear wires plugged into the jacks provided by the system manufacturer.

If there ever were separate "Speakers" and "Realtek" icons displayed in the user interfaces on my system, the speakers are long gone and I can't get them back. All I see is the Realtek driver. I would like to see two different "Speakers" Icons I could label "Built-in 2.1" and "External 5.1" in addition to the Realtek driver. How do I get these to reappear?

Can anyone suggest a way to have two different sets of "speakers" recognized and identified within the Microsoft UI in addition to the Realtec driver? If I could get this done, I believe the driver would let me "set as default" one or the other speaker set, and I'd have "software switching" capable of letting me choose whether the external speakers or the built in sound bar delivers the sound.

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49 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-04-05T12:27:25+00:00

Hi all.

I have the exact same issue. So do you many others. I've upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 and lost 5.1 surround sound.

I use Logitech Z-5500. Have a Gigabyte EX58 motherboard with built in Realtek HD Audio.

Connecting Logitech speaker system via SPDIF (optical or coaxil) simply will not produce true 5.1 surround sound (only stereo). Also Windows 7 fails to dectect any speakers (according to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Sound). Speakers remain greyed out. Yet stereo sound is heard.

Connecting Logitech speakers via 3 input jacks helps and unlocks speaker detection. But many of the speaker channel assignments are incorrect.

I have installed correctly and using the latest Realtek HD drivers for Windows 7.

I agree with the comments of others and believe this is a Windows 7 issue. This is because all of my 50 plus installed games detected and played true 5.1 surround sound when on a Windows XP system. But since simply upgrading to Windows 7 now many games such as Half Life 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, etc will not detect or allow 5.1 to operate.

This is a Windows 7 issue.

Can a Windows support staff member please test this issue by simply installing Windows 7 on a Gigabyte EX58 motherboard system with Logitech Z-5500 speaker system and connect Logitech speaker control panel via Coaxial or Optical or 3 audio jacks.

Kind regards,

Mark B.
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Anonymous

2010-03-29T19:03:41+00:00

rparsi,

I have tried just about all the "solutions" that everyone has mentioed on all the forums, but to no joy, And that gentleman who said there is no issue is just a little out of touch or is not tech savvy at all or is just reading from a script from Microsoft somewhere. the Realtech driver from their site now says it supports Windows 7 but it doesent work either. If you do hear anything as far as a solid fix.

Dell Inspiron 530

In my case I built the pc, so getting the driver is a simple matter of just going to the motherboard manufacturer's website. In your case you'll have to get the appropriate driver from Dell. Have you tried different speaker models?

Since you already tried possible fixes mentioned in other forums, I really don't know what to tell you. Out of curiosity, have you tried configuring the speakers as 7.1 in Control Panel-->Sound ?

I've read that for some people who have 5.1 speakers, that seemed to fix the issue (a reboot may be required). It didn't work in my case but maybe it'll work for you.

I think you'll have to do what I did, to everything at the problem including the kitchen sink.

Good luck.
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Anonymous

2010-03-29T18:59:18+00:00
There is more than just one Realtek audio chipset and more than one driver to go with them. Complicate that with the OEMs implementation of the hardware, user inexperience and 3rd party codecs and filters that may be installed on any particular system. What is a non-issue for the majority of users can be problematic for a few. Nobody has bothered to even mention which Realtek audio chipset they are trying to get to work. Or whether they are using analog or digital speakers, or any other useful information pertinent to the issue. From my own perspective the Realtek drivers for their ALC880 chipset have worked perfectly since the first beta release for the RC. Even the MS drivers worked, though the connections didn't match up with my HP's nicely colour coded and labelled jacks. If I switched to digital speakers I might have a different experience. If I tried to run non-self powered speakers I wouldn't get sound at all.
1. I didn't specify the RealTek chipset used by my motherboard because the Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P (rev. 1.1) is Windows 7 x64 certified (can't recall if 'certified' is the right word, but on Microsofts' qualified hardware list it has the Windows 7 logo with a green check mark). Thus I expected to not have problems with the speakers. Had the list not listed the motherboard with the Windows 7 logo, I would've researched to see what add-on audio card would be compatible.
2. All the speaker models mentioned are analog.
3. The colour coding of the audio jacks is irrelevant, as RealTek's software allows for custom channel assignments.
4. I thought about using digital speakers but they're beyond my budget.
As I mentioned in the update, I suspect other users who experienced the same problems may solve their issue by changing speaker models.
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Anonymous

2010-03-29T16:01:03+00:00

There is more than just one Realtek audio chipset and more than one driver to go with them. Complicate that with the OEMs implementation of the hardware, user inexperience and 3rd party codecs and filters that may be installed on any particular system. What is a non-issue for the majority of users can be problematic for a few. Nobody has bothered to even mention which Realtek audio chipset they are trying to get to work. Or whether they are using analog or digital speakers, or any other useful information pertinent to the issue. From my own perspective the Realtek drivers for their ALC880 chipset have worked perfectly since the first beta release for the RC. Even the MS drivers worked, though the connections didn't match up with my HP's nicely colour coded and labelled jacks. If I switched to digital speakers I might have a different experience. If I tried to run non-self powered speakers I wouldn't get sound at all.
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